Monday, February 19, 2007

Container Update

I'm back from Lome' after a meeting with the man who is handling the import of our container. It was a good meeting overall, and I learned that the container is going to be up here in Kara this weekend, probably on Saturday. This means that we can start getting settled in and moving towards a more normal life, and for that we are thankful!

The bad news is that we are going to have to pay alot more money for the container than we originally thought. The contents of our container have a declared value of about $6,500, and as a registered church organization, we are required to pay only a 10% import tax (it's normally 25% for household goods). HOWEVER, the Togolese government very recently passed a law declaring that all 20 foot containers like ours automatically have a value of $30,000, even if it's filled with nothing but toilet paper. Bummer for us! If you do the math, you can see that this new law changes our bill drastically. They made the change because a missions organization, which shall remain nameless, tried to claim that their container was only worth $30,000 and the Lome' Port Authority later found out that it was worth well over $100,000. Needless to say, this did not make them happy. Thanks guys!

So we are going to be very hard pressed to come up with the cash we need to pay the customs agents when they arrive in Kara this weekend, but we will begin praying that God will continue to provide, and we would ask that everyone please pray with us...